Charli XCX is already moving on to the next thing!
Just a day after renaming her 360_brat alternate Instagram to b.sides, she unveiled her May 2026 British Vogue cover and started giving fans their first real clues about what xcx8 might sound like.
Photographed by Rafael Pavarotti, Charli looks stunning on the cover, but it’s her interview that really makes the story pop. Speaking about the idea of making a rock record after Brat, she says, “For me, it’s fun to flip the form. We know there’s gonna be people who are bothered by it, but that’s fine.” She doubles down on that instinct with another blunt line: “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music.”
That same sense of creative restlessness runs through the whole piece. Charli says that after nearly 20 years of making music, “there is not much that can thrill me within music any more,” which makes the challenge of starting fresh feel even more intentional.
She explains that making xcx8 in a new environment helped bring the project to life again, with a tight creative team, a rougher demo-like vocal style, and George Daniel’s guitar keeping things raw. “We were doing our version of analogue, which is so silly and funny,” she says, “but putting it through our lens, and making sure that nothing felt too macho, was important.”
One of the best parts of the interview is Charli’s honesty about writing from inside her life without turning everything into obvious diary entries. “I don’t really want to write songs about my husband forever,” she says. “I’m not sure how interesting that is, and he knows that.” Instead, she’s interested in exploring the more obscure feelings of marriage and the way art functions as the central love of her life. “What would happen if that was taken from me,” she asks, reflecting on how art gives her purpose.
She also knows the line about the dance floor being dead is going to start conversations, and she’s already half-laughing at the predictability of it. “I know,” she says, grimacing, when told it will probably inspire a wave of very boring think pieces. That’s Charli in a nutshell: fully aware of the reaction, and still doing exactly what she wants anyway.
If Brat was Charli in control of the cultural moment, xcx8 sounds like the sound of her deliberately breaking that moment open and seeing what’s underneath. Are you ready for the next era?
XO Diva D 